CAJ marks another year spent promoting justice and protecting rights in our Annual Report 2018. It’s been an eventful twelve months for the CAJ team, not least because of the human rights implications of the UK’s impending exit from the EU. Introduction to the report: People in Northern Ireland are sometimes accused, not always unjustly,...
Agents for Britain’s Security Service are authorised to commit serious crimes, on British soil, without informing prosecutors, under a secretive MI5 policy, a court heard today. Reprieve, Privacy International, the Pat Finucane Centre and CAJ are challenging the legality of the scheme before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London. The groups’ leading counsel, Ben Jaffey...
CAJ has criticised the decision taken by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) today to refuse a request to re-examine the ‘Hooded Men’ case in its Grand Chamber. The case concerns the ‘interrogation in depth’ of the Hooded Men during their internment in 1971. While detained without charge or trial, these 14 men were...
No.-67-How-Public-Order-Policing-Works-in-Northern-Ireland-Standards-and-Accountability-Feb-2016 This document attempts to give an account of the standards to which the Police Service of Northern Ireland aspires when carrying out public order policing and some of the issues that arise. These standards are to be found in domestic legislation, a series of police guidance documents and international human rights instruments, primarily the...
The Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) is the sponsor department for the Public Records Office for Northern Ireland (PRONI). The DCAL Minister is currently the minister responsible for decisions on release of records, this is planned to transfer to the new Department of the Communities later in 2016. 3. A consultation was launched...
CAJ files this submission on the List of Issues Prior to Reporting (LoIPR) for the Committee against Torture’s 57th Session from 18 April – 13 May 2016. This is to be read in conjunction with the submission from CAJ on the UK’s 5th periodic report under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or...
S449-CAJ-Written-Evidence-to-Joint-Commitee-on-Draft-Investigatory-Powers-Bill-December-2015 CAJ welcomes the opportunity to provide Written Evidence to the Joint Committee on the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill. The bill provides a new framework for the use of investigatory powers, with a focus on surveillance. Outside of the issues with the current bill CAJ wishes to draw attention to other areas of covert policing...
S444-CAJ-Submission-to-ICCPR-June-2015 CAJ focuses this shadow report on the following matters which are included in the Committee’s List of Issues (LoI) for the UK (CCPR/C/GBR/Q/7, 20 November 2014) and previous Concluding Observations (CO) (CCPR/C/GBR/CO/6 30 July 2008): The planned repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights (Art. 2, LoI...
